


what you want to remember

by renecdote



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (but it's really only mentioned), Angst, Awkward Conversations, Car Accident, Complicated feelings about family, Duke is a good bro, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fire, Fluff, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, Memories, blizzard, getting warm, he's also feeling really out of his depth, lake house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-03 21:12:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17291519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: “Jason?”Jason looks up.“What is this place?”Jason and Duke get stranded during a blizzard. It's a good thing Bruce Wayne happens to own a lake house nearby that they can hole up in.





	what you want to remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ursapharoh15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ursapharoh15/gifts).



> A very belated Christmas gift - again I am so sorry about this! For the prompt hypothermia/ stuck in a blizzard.
> 
> Title from this quote from The Road by Cormac McCarthy: "You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
> 
> This is sprinkled with a lot of my own personal headcanons about Duke since we don't have as much canon to work with for him. One of which is that he was in a pretty serious car accident as a kid. Just for added angst y'know ;)
> 
> Anyway I hope I did the prompt and the characters justice. Enjoy!

 

“This is bullshit,” Jason says for the third time. He kicks the nearest tree and snow falls off the branches onto his head and the backpack slung over his shoulder. Jason doesn’t seem to care. He kicks the tree again, muttering “bullshit” under his breath with more vehemence than Duke thinks the situation deserves.

Okay, so he’s not thrilled about being stuck out here either, but things could be a lot worse. Jason says there’s a lake house out here somewhere that they can hole up in. He’d been vague about the details, only sharing that it belonged to Bruce and it should be stocked with supplies—food, blankets, probably a radio or something they can use to contact the Manor. Duke thinks it’s weird that Bruce has a safe house all the way out here, so far from Gotham and anything else, but thoughts of the house have put a troubled look on Jason’s face so he doesn’t ask questions. He’s just glad it exists.

There’s a blizzard building on the horizon and Duke definitely doesn’t want to be caught out in that. They are almost lucky the car skidded off the road when it did—definitely lucky Jason is as good behind the wheel as he is and they ended up in a snowbank not wrapped around a tree. If they had driven much longer through the storm that is coming it could have been a lot worse.

Visions of twisted metal and red-stained snow, lights flashing red and blue, the whine of a pneumatic saw cutting into the car around him crowd into Duke’s mind. He shakes them away, wincing when that makes his neck ache.Now is not the time to dredge up old traumatic memories. He just has to focus on getting to the house, getting out of this situation before it can become it’s own traumatic memory. 

It was just supposed to be a quick trip out of town to follow a lead on a case that had unexpectedly become intertwined with the Red Hood’s. Now Duke is wishing he had just stayed in bed this morning. 

Behind him, Jason swears when his foot catches on a branch hidden under the snow. 

“Come on,” Duke says with a sigh that makes his breath fog in front of him. “I think I see the house through the trees there.”

Duke speeds up, eager to be out of the snow. Eager to escape Jason’s foul mood, though he won’t admit it. He consoles himself with the fact that he (probably) isn’t the cause of the bee in Jason’s bonnet since he’d already been grumpy when Duke slid into the passenger seat of the car earlier. Unlike a car, any place owned by Bruce Wayne is sure to have multiple rooms and Duke is going to take full advantage of that to put some distance between himself and his partner for the day. 

“Hey—watch out!”

It’s ironic, really, that Duke turns at Jason’s shout and that is his fatal mistake. His foot slips on an icy rock and pulls his weight out from under him. Duke’s arms pinwheel as he tries to grab something but there’s nothing but snow within reach as he slides down the bank. 

The crack of the ice breaking echoes in Duke’s ears even as it’s replaced by the rushing of water over his head. It gushes between the gaps of his clothing, filling his jacket and dragging him down. Duke thrashes, head pushing upwards even though he isn’t sure, for a disorientating few seconds, which way that is exactly. Then Jason’s hand wraps around his wrist and Duke is hauled up out of the water. He coughs and splutters, heart pounding in his chest. 

“I said watch out,” Jason snaps, tension in his voice like a guitar string too tightly strung. It’s not anger—Duke knows what Jason Todd’s anger sounds like—it’s the kind of tone he has only used when Damian cried or someone almost died on patrol. Worried. Spooked. 

“Shut up,” Duke says between gasps for breath. He was only under for a few seconds but he feels like he just went through the Ironman Triathlon. Or Batman’s basic training again. 

There’s a moment of silence and then Jason says, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Duke says through traitorous teeth that start to chatter. He hugs himself, rubbing his arms through the wet leather of his jacket. It does nothing to warm him. 

“Oh fuck,” Jason says, and then he’s pulling Duke’s arms away and tugging at his jacket.

“What the hell are you—” Duke tries to twist away, pulling the jacket tighter across his chest. He’s cold—colder than he was before now—and it’s his only protection against the wind.

“That water is well below seventy degrees,” Jason says shortly, still trying to get Duke’s jacket off, “which means we need to worry about hypothermia—stop fighting me, flipping hell, I’m going to give you my jacket, just get that wet thing off.”

Oh.

Oh shit.

Duke strips his jacket off quickly and when his shirt sleeve gets caught in it he just pulls that off too. Jason’s jacket hugs his shoulders a moment later, fantastically warm against Duke’s chilled skin. 

“Come on,” Jason says. He stands and pulls Duke to his feet as well, steadying hand not really necessary but welcome against Duke’s shoulder. “The house is just up here—walk fast, it’ll warm you up.”

They trudge the rest of the way in silence. The blizzard is picking up and Duke shivers in the strong, biting wind. It throws flurries of snow in his face and he can see them catching in Jason’s hair. Duke hopes Jason isn’t too cold. Hypothermia or not he feel bad for taking his jacket. 

The cabin rises up through the whirling snow in front of them. Duke stumbles to a stop at the top of the wooden steps to the front porch and stands there, absently wondering whether it’s possible for a human being to literally shake apart from violent shivers, while Jason searches in potted plants and under rocks for a key.

“Can’t you just… pick it?” Duke suggests. What he really wants to ask is: why is Bruce Wayne’s unexpected safe house in the middle of nowhere so insecure it only has a key lock instead of the the three-step biometric lock and keypad configuration that all the others do?

Jason grunts. “Stay here,” he says. Then he spins on his heel and stalks off around the side of the house. Duke doesn’t know what exactly he does but less than two minutes later the door opens from the inside and Jason ushers him in. 

He shoves a pile of clothing into Duke’s arms, probably stolen from a bedroom or storage cupboard on his way through the house. “These should fit,” he says. “There’s blankets on the couch too. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Duke changes quickly out of his wet pants and ensconces himself in blankets on the couch. His shivering is subsiding, which is good. Or really bad, but Duke’s fingers and toes are tingling as warmth slowly reaches them, not going numb, so he figures hypothermia isn’t such a concern anymore. 

He looks around the room instead. It’s rustic, but consciously so. Deliberately, really, except for the wear and tear that screams _lived in_ not _architecture magazine_. Softened couches, nicks in table legs, a stain blending into the dark wooden floors that Duke thinks might be blood. It’s a place of rich colours and rich history swimming below the surface. 

Homey, Duke thinks. 

There are photographs on the walls and shelves around the room. Personal photos, of Bruce and Alfred and the kids. Duke stares at one on the mantlepiece of a much younger Bruce Wayne with Dick Grayson hanging over his shoulders. They’re both grinning at the camera—or Alfred behind the camera, maybe.

“This isn’t a safe house,” Duke says when he hears footsteps behind him.

Jason stops. His eyes look past Duke, past the photo that captured Duke’s attention, to another one of a young Bruce and another kid who can only be Jason.

“No,” Jason says. Then he looks away, scowl darkening his face. He doesn’t offer any further explanation, just stomps over to the door and pulls on one of the thick coats hanging there.

“I’m going to find firewood. Don’t move.”

The door slams shut behind him. 

Duke frowns. It’s obvious that Jason has happy memories of this lake house—it’s written across his smiling face in every picture of him in the place—but it’s just as obvious that he’s not happy about being back now.

Duke doesn’t have a lot of fond memories of holidays with his parents when he was young. Not that they’re all bad, just that that there weren’t many holidays. They’d gone camping once with his uncle, but the memory is so old and faded Duke isn’t even sure where they went. Certainly nowhere as deluxe as the Wayne family lake house. 

Duke can’t help wondering whether Bruce would have brought him here one day too, if he hadn’t stumbled upon it first. He’s not… he doesn’t think he’s a son, not really, not the way the others are. It’s an insecurity he just can’t shake—or maybe that’s not the right word. Duke has a place with the Waynes, however confusing it may be sometimes, but he’s not like the other orphans Bruce has taken in. He has parents out there, somewhere. One day he’ll find and then…

And then?

A thump at the door startles Duke. The room is darker now, almost pitch black. There’s another thump and a muffled voice snatched away by the howling wind that rattles the windows. 

Jason, Duke realises. He jolts up, stumbling on blankets that twist around his ankles like vines, threatening to send him crashing to the floor. Duke shakes them off, hopping across the room to pull open the door. Jason, arms laden down with firewood, is fairly blown in by a gust of wind that throws snow inside as well before Duke can slam the door shut. 

“Here, let me-”

“I’ve got it.”

Jason brushes past him and drops his load of wood by the fireplace. Duke, feeling awkward and unsure without some way to help, picks up the blankets he dropped while he watches Jason light the fire. It’s mostly branches, snapped small enough to fit in the hearth, wet and cold and protesting fiercely against the flame Jason coaxes up around them.

“Come on,” Jason mutters, following it up with muttered cursing in about three languages Duke doesn’t know.

When the fire splutters to life, flame roaring up like a sudden mushroom cloud, Duke and Jason both kneel in front of it, hands outstretched. Slowly, the warmth builds, chasing away the lingering dampness from Duke’s fall into the frozen lake outside. He spends a moment being thankful, again, that Bruce Wayne owns a house out here—however strange a location for a safe house he still thinks it is. Especially when the house does not actually resemble any of the Bat-sanctioned safe houses Duke has been in before. 

“You hungry?” Jason asks, sounding distracted.

“Sure,” Duke agrees. 

There are tins of vegetables and soup in the pantry, pasta, jars of sauce, dried herbs organised in alphabetical order. Jason cobbles together a meal that could almost be considered healthy with the rough assortment of ingredients available. 

Afterwards, Duke finds himself with a blanket around his shoulders again. Dark red and vaguely scratchy, hand crocheted though he’s not sure who might have done it. 

Jason settles in an armchair across from him, something thoughtful on his face as he opens a book he must have found somewhere in the house. 

Duke has the strange realisation that it all feels very… dare he say, domestic. 

Is this how Jason felt whenever he came here as a kid? he wonders. Warm and comfortable. Drowsy after a day spent on the lake, skiing or fishing, maybe hiking. Bruce sitting opposite him, a book in his hands, maybe reading it aloud.

Duke shakes away the thoughts of a history built in this house that he doesn’t know. A childhood he’s always been curious about if only because nobody talks about it. 

Duke bites his lip. He could always…

The lights go out.

“Frick,” Jason says. “I think there’s a generator somewhere…”

He comes back from his search for the generator without good news.

“No fuel in the damned thing.”

Duke shrugs. “Not like we aren’t used to the dark.”

They drag two armchairs closer to the fire and sit, absorbing its warmth in silence. Duke eyes are drawn, again, to the photos on the mantle above the dancing flames. He sneaks a glance at Jason and finds that his gaze is pointedly fixed on the book in his hands, even though he can’t possibly be having an easy time reading it by only the fire’s glow. 

If Duke has learnt anything from his time as a foster kid it’s that the Waynes are a bloody secretive lot. Information is rarely offered and the only real way to get answers is to ask. Interrogate, occasioanlly.

(Whether the answer will be straightforward and helpful is another matter entirely.)

“Jason?”

Jason looks up.

“What is this place?”

Jason looks away, staring into the flickering flames of the fire. 

“We used to come up here some weekends, mostly during the summer,” he says. “Me and Bruce—and Alfie sometimes. Dick came once but that…”

Duke remembers half-formed mentions of the days when Bruce Wayne and his eldest child were barely on speaking terms.

Jason shakes his head. “Usually it was just Bruce and I. Father-son bonding or something.” He snorts, derisive. “Whatever that was supposed to count for.”

Duke says nothing. What is there to say? ‘I’m sorry you died and it fucked up your relationship with your dad.’ Yeah, no. Even if Duke knew enough about everything that had happened surrounding Jason Todd’s death… even if he’d known the Jason before compared to the Jason now, the _Bruce_ before…

The Bruce Wayne in the photos dotted around the lake house isn’t all the happy, carefree Bruce from the photos with younger Jasons and Dicks. There’s a few of Tim, only one of them with Bruce in the photo as well. That Bruce’s smile is tighter, his face aged in a way that can’t be chalked up just to years passing. The Bruce with his arm around Damian’s shoulder has the first flecks of grey hair behind his ears.

“Bruce…” Duke begins and he knows as he opens his mouth that he’s probably going to regret it. He doesn’t know Bruce the same way Jason does, the same way any of them do. He has no authority to speak on this topic at all. But he does know one thing. “He still loves you.”

Raw pain flashes across Jason’s face for a second before he turns so it’s hidden by the flickering shadows thrown out by the fire. When Jason speaks, his voice is ugly.

“He still loves _him_.”

The Jason in the photos. The Jason from before. The Jason who died.

Duke shrugs. He has no stakes in repairing Bruce and Jason’s tense relationship. He’s not a therapist. 

He’s also not capable of backing down when maybe, just maybe, he could offer something that might help someone.

“Sure,” Duke says neutrally.“He still loves him too.”

Jason stands up. “You don’t understand,” he says, voice like the crackling logs in the fire, hissing and popping from the slightest flame. “You wanted to know what this place is? It’s a fucking relic, a—a geocache of memories of a time I can _never_ go back to. It’s a place I was—“

Jason cuts himself off. His hands are clenched tightly at his sides and Duke realises he has unconsciously braced himself to be hit. He makes himself relax before Jason can notice. 

The fire shudders and groans, throwing up a burst of sparks as a log shifts. 

“I’m sorry,” Duke says, not entirely sure what he’s apologising for. 

The wind howls as it throws snow against the battered lake house. 

“Whatever,” Jason says. “It’s late, I’m going to bed. You should to.”

His footsteps are heavy on the stairs. Duke doesn’t watch him go. He finds his eyes resting on the book left behind on the couch instead. The Road, Cormac McCarthy. Duke remembers reading it himself, bent over the small print in the back of the public library, not moving for hours because he had to know how it ended. His tears splattering the page when it did. 

The crease of the pages in Jason’s copy suggest he hasn’t made it that far yet. Duke wonders how long it’s been sitting here, waiting for the boy to come back from the dead and finish it. 

He wonders whether a young Jason Todd hoped for the same happy ending Duke did.

He wonders whether Jason still hopes.

Duke sighs. There are bedrooms aplenty in the well-loved lake house, dotted with old, forgotten possessions like palimpsests of different childhoods. Duke curls up on the couch instead, the orange of the fire flickering behind his closed eyes. 

_What would you do if I died?_

_If you died I would want to die too._

When he falls asleep he dreams of a parade of boys with dark, curly hair in red and green running across a frozen lake. He wants to yell for them to stop, not to go too far, that their father will worry, that it will kill him if they get hurt out there. And then he’s standing in front of a grave and it doesn’t matter what happens to the boys because the father is already dead. 

————————

Duke wakes feeling restless. He rolls his neck and winces when pain shoots up the back of his skull. It’s more stiff after sleeping and he holds himself gingerly when he sits up. The pain settles at the base of his skull, not the worst headache Duke has ever had but certainly annoying.

He sits up, expecting to see the fire burnt down to white ash, but Jason must have used some of his bat training to sneak past and put more wood on at some point because the fire is burning merrily. Duke’s clothes from yesterday are draped over the armchairs in front of it to dry.

The photographs on the mantlepiece are clearer in daylight. Duke catches sight of the one of Bruce and Jason, the colours more vibrant than they seemed last night. Bits of his dream flash across his mind; curly hair and early graves. Duke shudders and wills them away. He folds his blankets neatly on the couch and wanders toward the kitchen, yawning, hoping that coffee can be found somewhere among the house’s imperishable foodstuffs.

Jason is standing at the countertop in the kitchen, staring out the window while he sips tea from a fading Hudson U mug. The world outside is blinding white, snow reflecting the glaring sun trying to break through the cloud cover. 

“Morning,” Jason says, turning to look at Duke. “Blizzard is pretty much gone. I spoke to Alfred, he’s sending someone out with a car as soon as the roads get cleared—power lines fell down or something.”

_Or something._ Like he doesn’t really care. Duke is sure Jason memories the details Alfred gave him though, that he’s counting down the minutes and seconds until they get out of here. He gets it. What had Jason called this place? A geocache of memories? Duke gets the impression it feels more like a mausoleum. 

“We’re still heading up to check out that lead, right?” Duke asks, busying himself making a cup of coffee from the instant granules in a jar in the pantry. It won’t be good, but it will be caffeine so it will have to do. 

Jason tips his mug up to drink the last of the tea then rinses it in the sink. The simple action seems to take longer than it needs to. Uncertainty flutters in Duke’s chest. Maybe he was too pushy last night, maybe he should have just lived with his curiosity about the lake house, maybe Jason won’t want to continue working the case with him. Or any other case. Maybe…

“Tomorrow,” Jason says finally. “When the roads are safer.”

Relief crushes the building anxiety. Dukes nods. Smart. They don’t want to wreck the car and get stranded again. 

“Last night…” Jason begins hesitantly.

Duke holds his hands up. “Hey, it’s cool. Bad memories, I get it, you don’t have to explain.”

Jason makes a frustrated sound and shakes his head. “Good memories,” he corrects. “Really good ones. I…” He sighs. Continues in a whisper Duke isn’t entirely sure he’s meant to hear, “I didn’t realise I’d forgotten how good.”

“Oh,” Duke says. He cringes at how awkward he sounds. What’s the problem then? he wonders. Are you as masochistic as your dad can be? Why don’t you just let yourself be happy again?

But Duke doesn’t know the full story. And it’s never that simple. 

Jason clears his throat, gaze somewhere around Duke's coffee mug. “Anyway, it’s not your fault it…” _Hurts_. Jason doesn’t say it, but Duke’s mind fills the word in easily.

“Okay,” he says. He’s wondering now whether something happened last night while he was sleeping. A visit from the ghosts of lake house past maybe? 

Jason nods. A gesture that seems to signify the conversation is over. Duke feels a little like someone just threw him in the deep end of a lake then rowed away with all the life-saving flotation devices. The fragments of their conversation drift around him, bobbing like pieces of unidentifiable jetsam.

“Great,” Jason says, voice much too bright all of a sudden. “I’m going to go clear the drive so Alfred can get the car up here.”

Jason goes outside and shovels snow while Duke crunches dry cereal for breakfast. The sugar between his teeth tastes like childhood. He still isn’t sure what exactly Jason was trying to say this morning, but it felt almost like an apology. Duke thinks long and hard about it until his headache doubles in intensity, then he decides it doesn’t really matter. They’re probably never going to talk about this stay at the lake house again anyway.

Duke washes his bowl in the sink then goes to tidy up the main room, leaving it so it’s like they were never here at all. 

It’s almost two hours later when a car pulls up, horn honking twice to call them out of the house. Jason is at the door almost as fast as a Flash, telling Duke to hurry up or be left behind. Snarky, impatient, but not mean. 

“Wait a sec,” Duke says on impulse. He jogs back over to the couch and snatches up the copy of The Road still lying there. He hadn’t known where to put it away. “You should take this. Can’t leave a good book unfinished right?”

“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” Jason says, but he takes the book and shoves it in his bag. 

Duke follows him out the door. He doesn’t know where Jason found a key but he turns and locks the door behind them and Duke catches a glint of silver being slipped into his pocket. 

Does that mean you plan on coming back? he almost asks. 

Jason is already striding toward the black Range Rover waiting for them, yelling a hello to Alfred as he goes. 

The question dies on Duke’s lips. It’s really none of his business, he reminds himself. If Jason wants to come back to the lake house and torture himself with memories or to reconnect with some of the happiness he felt there, that’s up to him. 

“You coming?” Jason calls, waiting by the open car door.

If he ever wants company though… Well, Duke supposes spending a night trapped there by a blizzard wasn’t so bad after all. A planned trip might even be fun. 

“Yeah,” Duke yells back, jogging down the steps to the car. “Just admiring the view!”

The lake is pure white and glittering in the sun. It’s breathtaking. Duke almost wishes he had taken a moment to admire it. 

Maybe next time. 

“Good morning, Master Duke,” Alfred says as he slides into the car. 

“Good morning, Alfred,” Duke returns with a smile, clicking his seatbelt as the car starts to move, snow and ice crunching under the tires. 

Duke can’t be sure, but as they drive away he thinks he sees Jason looking back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to Cormac McCarthy for the wonderfully angsty lines quoted in the piece:  
> What would you do if I died?  
> If you died I would want to die too.
> 
> For context, it's a conversation between a father and a son. ~~Bruce and Jason feels anyone?~~ If you have not read The Road you absolutely should it is a masterpiece. 
> 
> If you enjoyed the fic, comments, kudos, screaming on [tumblr](http://renecdote.tumblr.com), etc. are all very much appreciated :)


End file.
